Pics: Accidents in India

This is a discussion on Pics: Accidents in India within Road Safety, part of the Team-BHP category; Originally Posted by Santoshbhat
Hitting the brakes hard will cause your car to swerve with locked up tires unless you ...

Hitting the brakes hard will cause your car to swerve with locked up tires unless you have ABS.

Avoid driving on the right most lane and stick to the left lane as much as possible.

I have ABS.

As pointed out below on many highways left lane is even more tricky. Of course best would be to try to drive sedately but at times esp. during night drives when your field of vision is limited and the road median may have vegetation it may be quite impossible to avoid a small animal which comes out of nowhere.

My response is only for making the best out of a bad situation

Quote:

Originally Posted by hserus

Eh if you drive on the left most lane that leaves you dodging people driving two wheelers down the wrong side, pedestrians, people trying to turn into a side road / service road.

I don't go very much above 100..110 personally speaking. However if you drive down chennai - bangalore you will run across no shortage of two wheelers etc coming from the opposite direction (wrong side of the road) because they are trying to take a short cut on the highway instead of drive through their town which is off a service road on the side of the highway. Whatever speed you make in such cases - even 40 kmph is a nuisance when you have a two wheeler come down the left lane in the opposite direction to traffic, with his emergency lights blinking / headlight on just to show he wants to come down the wrong road.

That ought to be enough to prosecute DUI villains for murder. Wonder then, why this section is not imposed in those cases. I suppose the argument is that the "person committing the act" is so sloshed that he cannot be expected to "know that it is so imminently dangerous".

Hi Binand, I hope you will tolerate a somewhat long and at times meandering reply.

Let me begin by going over some of the relevant provisions of our law

- Causing the death of a human is known as homicide

- Homicide is ordinarily a crime except in certain cases which are elaborated (self defence, defence of others, etc.)

- As a crime it is classified as culpable homicide [Section 299 IPC]

- Some forms of culpable homicide are given special treatment and called murder (Section 300 IPC). This is usually when the death is

(a) done with intent to kill or
(b) due to an act that the accused knew was so inherently dangerous that it was in all likelihood to cause death.

Punishment is severe (either death or life in jail)

- There are also some exceptions in the law which take into account the circumstances of the homicide and provide for a lesser offence simply called 'culpable homicide' (Section 299 and 304 IPC). Example killing someone due to a fight following a provocation. The punishment is less than that for murder but still severe (minimum 10 years, max life). Within culpable homicide a further 'special treatment' provides for a lesser sentence of 0-10 years if the if the act is done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death, but without any intention to cause death. [This is the famous S. 304 (II) under which Nooriya Havelivala, Alistair Perriera, Salman Khan were all convicted]

While it appears similar to the definition of murder, the difference is one of probability -- act so dangerous that it will in all probability cause death (murder, S. 300) versus likely to cause death (culpable homicide S.304(II)).

- Lastly, there is also the youngest sibling of the homicide provisions -- Section 304A that deals with death due to 'rash and negligent acts'. Just a max sentence of two years. 304A comes with a rider - it is not applicable if the offence is proven to have all the ingredients of culpable homicide (or murdeR).

Coming to the criminal jurisprudence in India

Section 304A was not enacted as a safe harbour for drunk drivers. It was originally inserted in 1870 (even before the invention of the motor-car!). After independence this was the staple provision for prosecuting hit-and-run cases. When police started charging DUI homicide drivers, it became their favorite defence to be 'booked' under this rather than be charged with culpable homicide (or worse, murder). The result was a trend of 1-2 year sentences for what is quite a serious crime. As a result of the ensuing outrage and media reports of the 90s and 2000s, courts and police began to get more proactive and a series of judgments in some famous DUI homicide cases courts clarified that the act of getting inebriated and then taking the wheel amounted to an act done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death and so convicted accused under S. 304(II) which carries a sentence upto 10 years (quite a contrast to 304A). I can see no reason to fault this approach. Sallu, Mr Nanda, Ms Havelivala and Mr Perriera were all convicted under this section even though they all tried to contend that they were 'merely' reckless and therefore should be tried under S. 304A.

In order to qualify for a murder finding, the judge must believe that the act of getting inebriated and then taking the wheel amounts to an act done with the knowledge that it will in all probability cause death. As of now it seems judges do not believe so.

I have some thoughts on the confounding reaction to this incident and I will make a post on that later.

It happened to me while driving down from Kolkata to Bangalore, near Orissa-AP border, a billy (baby goat) came out of nowhere! ...

[another] offtopic, but billy goat means a male goat. the kids are called, err, kids, and yes, that is where the word comes from. Sheep have lambs; goats have kids; humans have...

Bullbars, although very good at injuring humans, probably don't help much with dogs (too small) and I doubt that they help much with cattle. Driving into a moderate-size cow, let alone a large buffalo, that might stand higher than our cars, is probably on a par with hitting a brick wall. Possible worse.

Bullbars, although very good at injuring humans, probably don't help much with dogs (too small) and I doubt that they help much with cattle. Driving into a moderate-size cow, let alone a large buffalo, that might stand higher than our cars, is probably on a par with hitting a brick wall. Possible worse.

They call them bullbars in US cattle country - and here where we have even more straying cows. In australia, they're called roo bars because you'd much more often slam into a wandering kangaroo.

The title of this thread says "Accidents in India - PICS" and lets keep it at that.

Last three pages have only legal discussion and for that I believe we shall use the below thread. In case we wish to bring any member's attention to specific point regarding law or legal matter, we can post a link to this thread and our respective post.

"Bus Toppled after hitting a Gaur A speeding SRS travels bus toppled after ramming into a Indian Gaur & killing it on spot in Aanechoukoor forest of Kodagu District, Karnataka.
6 People were seriously injured in the incident.
This incident happened 17th June 2015 around 08:30 P.M"

Thats nasty... Looks like both were in high speeds and something on left of Civic got it right into the right bottom of the bus. Seems Civic must have been above 150+ looking at the condition of the car probably no one survived.
any updates anyone has about this ?

Terrific accident there. It's a Amaze not City, I am sure nobody would have survived in this incident as we can't see any airbag being deployed, guess it was a lower end model. Let the souls rest in peace

Yeah thats an Amaze. Those front fixed headrests are a dead giveaway. Do we see a part of the deflated airbag just above the steering, in the second picture? The damage seems to be more on the driver side, I doubt the driver would have survived this.